Monday, March 28, 2011

Cool little eBooks for lil' kids

Natalie wanted me to find her a book on fairies to read tonight to her, but we don't have any that she hasn't read yet... So I went looking through Barnes and Noble's kids eBook selection with no success. It's pretty hard to find ones that are for her age group, for the Nook, AND about fairies. They don't have the "Rainbow Magic" series of fairy books by Daisy Meadows that Natalie loves in eBook form at B&N. Looking further into the book series and eBooks, looks like they have them for Amazon's Kindle... or I can buy Nook-compatible versions from the UK.

Now, back to the search for a book for tonight to read to her... I managed to find a picture-book with Dragons: Dragon's Alphabet Soup: Learn ABC with Eric the Dragon by Rachel Yu, Michael Yu. When I brought the Nook to her room after buying the book online, she was surprised that we already had the book ready to read. She's used to picking out books from the library and waiting for me to pick them up from the library when they are ready. After we finished that, she wanted to read another, so I went and bought another book right there while talking about the other book. Seeing that Natalie liked the first book by Rachel Yu, I got another: A Dragon Named Dragon. That one she liked as well.

One of the impressive little facts about these books is that they are written by a 14-year old. Goes to show that anybody can be author books these days with the great ways for self-publishing that have come about.

Sunday, March 13, 2011

Natalie's Ghoulish Entry Into Story Making

Here's a little storyline I worked with Natalie to make. She's got quite an imagination, and is good at mixing in stuff she's seen from movies.

The story begins with a baby ghost looking for the mama ghost. It's flying through the air going "wooooooooooo". The ghost & grass were drawn by me, however everything else was colored by Natalie. The "wooo" is most likely a little reference by Natalie to one of Daniel's sounds he makes when he just wants to make a bunch of noise.

The mama ghost is looking around for the baby ghost and doesn't know where to find him. Everything in this was drawn by Natalie. I helped coloring the sky/grass a little bit.

The mama ghost found the baby ghost and did what mama and baby ghosts (apparently) do: squish together and be one. They are flying over a beach with a little water looking for the daddy ghost. I took the mama and baby pictures and traced them together. Natalie did all the coloring in this one.

Here a ghost is in the water... it was going to be the daddy ghost but Natalie vetoed that. Natalie directed what the picture would be with the ghost, water, and fish. She colored in the water, and I did the fishes. The story "ended" with disinterest as Natalie embarked on another idea.

In this picture, a baby ghost is trying to turn a baby that the mother is holding into a ghost. I did all the quick drawing here, anticipating Natalie changing/coloring... but she didn't. She took this idea from Ghostbusters 2 and the flying ghost-Janosz taking Oscar.